Current-mode simultaneous bidirectional transceiver for on-chip global interconnects

Abstract

A new current-mode simultaneous bidirectional transceiver for high speed asynchronous communication over on-chip global interconnects has been proposed in this paper. The new transceiver can receive and transmit the data simultaneously over a same differential interconnect, thereby decreasing the number of interconnects required compared to unidirectional signalling schemes. The transceiver provides a low input impedance and so supports high bandwidth of transmission. The circuit has been implemented in 65nm UMC process with a global interconnect of length 5mm and width 1.5μm. The energy efficiency of the transceiver for simultaneous bidirectional data transmission of 10 Gbps data is 0.38 pJ/b.